Robert Wilson and the CIVIL warS - Howard Brooks

Robert Wilson and the CIVIL warS recounts one of the most ambitious theatre projects of the 20th century. In the early 1980s, visionary director Robert Wilson set out to create the CIVIL warS, a multinational opera planned for the 1984 Los Angeles Olympic Arts Festival. The film follows his collaborations with an eclectic mix of artists such as Philip Glass, David Byrne and Gavin Bryars, capturing both the excitement and the strain of constructing the work in separate segments across the globe. As logistical and financial challenges grow, the documentary becomes an intimate portrait of Wilson at a creative crossroads, reflecting on artistic ambition, cultural exchange and the fragility of grand ideas in the face of reality.